from MSNBC transcripts

"Scarborough Country"

transcript of the 10pm ET show, segment starting 10:30pm

PAT BUCHANAN (GUEST HOST): And coming up, the Iraq munitions mystery,
is this another case of media bias? We'll talk about it when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAT BUCHANAN: Up next, are the media favoring John Kerry, and will that
impact next week's elections? We'll talk about that in a minute.

But, first, let's get the latest headlines from the MSNBC News Desk.

(NEWS BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: From the press room, to the courtroom, to the halls of
Congress, Joe Scarborough has seen it all. Welcome back to SCARBOROUGH
COUNTRY.

BUCHANAN: Six days left until the election and we are on day three of
the missing explosives story. And some are charging that the presentation of
the story represents foul play by big media. We will get to that in a moment.

But, first, a new study concludes that, in the first two weeks of October, the
critical weeks during the period of the presidential debates, the mainstream
media was far more favorable to Kerry than to President Bush. The nonpartisan
Project For Excellence in Journalism sampled 817 stories from four major
newspapers, two cable news networks and the four leading broadcast networks.

The Project that found three in five Bush stories were negative on the
president, while only one-fourth of all Kerry stories were negative on John
Kerry. Stories about Kerry were positive a third of the time, while stories of
Bush were positive only one-seventh of the time.

Joining us now, Paul Levinson, the director of media studies at Fordham
University, and Bob Kohn, the author of Journalistic Fraud.

Welcome, gentlemen.

Paul, let me start with you.

Are you surprised by these numbers, that the stories are negative on the
president predominantly and predominantly positive on John Kerry?

PAUL LEVINSON, FORDHAM UNIVERSITY: I'm not
surprised at all. I think there's more negative to report about Bush. He,
after all, is the sitting president. The country is in a difficult overseas
situation in Iraq. There are all kinds of domestic problems. The worst you
can say about Kerry is perhaps his Senate record isn't as good as it could have
been. But fair reporting would be much tougher on Bush than Kerry.

BUCHANAN: So you think it's a natural product of the very fact that the
president is the incumbent, the challenger holds up his failures and the
media's job is to report the failures?

LEVINSON: That's precisely what the media's job is, especially in an
election period in which we are considering whether or not this president
should be elected.

BUCHANAN: We are also considering whether or not he should be replaced
by John Kerry, are we not, Bob Kohn?

BOB KOHN, AUTHOR: That's right.
You know, when I first saw this story, Pat, my reaction was, well, duh. I
mean, there's quantitative bias and there's qualitative bias. And this is
another example on the qualitative side how much the press, just by sheer
numbers of articles, are biased against Bush.

But it's the qualitative side that's even more important, because this study
doesn't take into account the front page of The New York Times. You
saw what they did with that bogus front-page banner headline. You didn't see a
banner headline about the swift boats. You did not see The Times
cover that at all for several weeks.

(CROSSTALK)

LEVINSON: Of course not.

BUCHANAN: Let me take that to Paul.

Paul, let me ask you this.

LEVINSON: Sure.

BUCHANAN: Look, I have got to agree 100 percent with that. Look, they
dropped this on the president. It's an 18-month-old event. They dropped it in
a two-column headline, major, all-out story. The "60 Minutes" - CBS' "60
Minutes" - which decided that the National Guard story of 30 years ago was so
important, they devoted a major story to it, and they got caught with all these
bogus, falsified, forged documents.

"60 Minutes" was going to drop this 48 hours before the election. Now, is that
not using your media power to try to bring about the defeat of a candidate?

LEVINSON: It's using the media precisely as Thomas Jefferson
intended. The media is supposed to report news events.
The New York Times didn't make this up. This is something that in fact
has happened in Iraq. Surely, Bob doesn't...

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: How long ago, Paul, did it happen?

LEVINSON: Let me answer.
Surely, Bob doesn't think that The New York Times made up the fact
that the munitions are missing. It happened 18 months ago. The New York
Times was not sitting on this story for 18 months. We don't know exactly
why it took so long for the story to come out. In fact, what I heard is that
Allawi was the one who basically broke the story.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Well, I heard that it was the IAEA and ElBaradei.

LEVINSON: So is that The New York Times' fault?

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: But that makes a good point, Bob.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Aren't we entitled to know who is dropping the dime here and
whether the story, frankly, has any merit? Because I don't believe for a
second that, after the 101st Airborne came through there, a bunch of Iraqis, a
couple hundred of them, went in there with 40 trucks and hauled that junk out
over roads which were occupied completely by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and
Humvees.

KOHN: Right. We don't know who the anonymous source is who dropped
this letter in The New York Times' lap. The speculation is, it is the
head of a nuclear agency at the U.N., who is going to lose his job.

BUCHANAN: It's ElBaradei.

KOHN: Right. He is going to lose his job. He doesn't want Bush to
win.

So The New York Times has a responsibility and CBS has a
responsibility to be very skeptical about this bomb being dropped in their lap
at this point in time.

(CROSSTALK)

KOHN: To respond to what has been said, and it is very important,
because The New York Times did make something up, because The New
York Times did not know. It wasn't evident from the letter or anything
else that whether the munitions, whether the explosives were evacuated before
the troops got there.

The New York Times led the public to believe that this was looted after
the U.S. troops got there. And that is something that we do not know today.
And that is where they did the slant.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: OK, let me ask you, Paul. Now, look, let's say the National
Guard story was legitimate, this is legitimate. Doesn't The Times
also have a duty to say-at least tell you the source is coming from somebody
that may want to torpedo the president, that it's 18 months ago, that it is
highly unlikely that somebody went in there after the Americans were there, in
other words, put this in context, rather than print it as some kind of attack
ad on page one?

LEVINSON: The important thing was to print it in a way that got
everyone's attention. Obviously, it got your attention. You now seem to have
a theory as to what happened.

BUCHANAN: It has got the president's attention.

LEVINSON: Well, good. That's precisely what The New York Times
should be doing.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Suppose it turns out...

LEVINSON: If it turns out that it is not true?

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Yes.

LEVINSON: If it turns out that it is not true, then
The Times was still acting exactly as it should have.

BUCHANAN: Uh-huh. And Kerry is elected and that's a good thing.

LEVINSON:The Times is not an arbiter of ultimate truth.

KOHN: Not when they slant it.

LEVINSON: What a reporter has to do is report information that he or
she receives. Of course they shouldn't make up stories.
I was one of the first to condemn The Times when Jayson Blair came out
with his absurd forgeries, and it took The Times way too long to admit
it. And Bob Kohn wrote a good book about that.

(CROSSTALK)

KOHN: Thank you.

LEVINSON: But this is a completely different situation. We have an
election, a close election, and the people deserve to know the truth.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: All right, but, Paul, suppose we had not discovered the
forgeries in the National Guard story and it cost the president the election.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: What I'm not hearing from you is any sense that the media are
responsible for anything when they are on the very eve of a very tight
election.

LEVINSON: That is because you have not heard what I was saying.
The New York Times is not the only newspaper. There are other media.
And, in fact, in the CBS case, bloggers and Fox News and MSNBC all jumped on
CBS.

BUCHANAN: Thank goodness.

OK, Paul, Bob, thanks for joining us tonight.

===========================================================================click here for transcripts of some of
Paul Levinson's recent major tv appearances click here for
videoclips of some appearances
===========================================================================

You are visitor number 421 .

Pages written and updated by
Tina
Vozick. Email her with any questions.